Pink Floyd Set To Shriek Back Into The Stadium World

March 27, 1994|By DEBORAH WILKER Music Writer

Every so often the rock world rises up and screams, "Look at me."It's as if this bastard cousin of the film and TV industries must excise its show biz inferiorities by regularly staging the kind of blinding outdoor extravaganzas that force Hollywood - and the universe - to pay attention.

Even if this is just about some of the old dinosaurs lumbering back into stadiums, they'll all net enough publicity and cash over the next few months to make Oprah's latest deal seem like pocket change.

So look we must, first at the impending Pink Floyd Spectacular, and later this year at The Eagles, The Rolling Stones, The 25th anniversary of Woodstock - and Billy Joel and Elton John who are a planning a novel, one-time stadium trek together.

Having less to do with rock music and everything to do with corporate largesse, the return of Pink Floyd is expected to be the most visual of these grandiose events.

Making its debut at Joe Robbie Stadium on Wednesday, Pink Floyd and its producers, stage directors and set designers are still rehearsing a colossal production that will tour worldwide and is expected to gross more than $200 million by summer's end.

As with past Pink presentations, this one is determined to dazzle you with lasers and a rainbow assortment of flying props. The actual musicians will be secondary, but not the music, which will come mostly from the band's late-'60s and '70s catalog of otherworldly album tracks.

There is every indication that fans can't wait to welcome back these former front-runners of artful, airy progressive rock, the nucleus of which is still guitarist David Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason and pianist Rick Wright.

In city after city during the past few weeks, tickets have sold at record pace. While many hot young bands struggle at box offices despite their fame, brand loyalty among older rock fans rarely wavers.

But just what it will all add up to, other than a colorful blitz and a great haul at the cash register, isn't yet apparent.

A new album, The Division Bell, was intended for store shelves last week, but is instead being held back by Sony Music until the tour has been under way for at least one week.

Preview copies have also been withheld from most music critics and radio stations. (Never a good sign.) That's because if fans don't like it, or balk at the idea of something new from a classic band, the sale of remaining tickets in some cities could slump.

Band members are, of course, conducting no interviews. Nor will reps reveal anything substantitive about the production, the new music, or the impetus for a return to stadiums after seven years if indeed it is for some reason other than money.

There is, in fact, no clue as to why the band was gone so long and is just now resurfacing. Nor can anyone from the group's record label, management company or concert company say whether Floyd plans to stick around for another album after all this.

"I can't answer any of that," says Jim Monaco, a spokesman with Toronto's CPI, a concert company that is co-promoting the tour.

Insiders say band members have been doing little more than racing fast cars and enjoying their millions over the past few years. Sporadic charity gigs, the supervision of the production of a boxed set (Shine On), and the recent recording of The Division Bell are all that the band's official resume from Sony Music shows.

"I think they genuinely missed the roar of the crowd," says Jack Boyle, owner of the Cellar Door Companies, a co-promoter of Pink Floyd's Florida shows.

"Every two or three years or so the pre-MTV icons get together and say, `Hey, it's not over. We're still here. We're still about great live performances and we wanna come out.' "And the money doesn't hurt."

-- If ever a band had earned the right to record and perform at whim, Pink Floyd qualifies. Throughout the '70s and early '80s the group was among the most prolific in music, cranking out an unmatched catalog that was as obsessed with the bleakness of social order as it was with whimsical science fiction and the end of the world.

Though the band made a psychedelic splash in the late '60s, it wasn't until 1973's Dark Side Of The Moon that Floyd was catapulted to superstardom. The album was as much about conceptual packaging as it was about maneuvering synthesizers to create a surreal madhouse effect. Record-buyers had never heard anything quite like it.

The landmark album, mostly about alienated youth, has shepherded several generations through junior high and high school; through first crushes and after-school explorations with beer, pot and who knows what else. The allure was the hypnotic, almost hallucinogenic effect that enveloped listeners every time and carted them away.

Moon stayed on Billboard's album chart continuously for 15 years - a record that no recording act has ever come close to. Nearly 30 million copies have been sold over 21 years. Even now it sells about 1 million copies per year.